


Yeppuda

by queenfanfiction



Category: Jumong
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:05:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenfanfiction/pseuds/queenfanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why did you decide to put up your hair?" Hyoppo blurted out one evening the moment Sayong entered their shared chambers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yeppuda

**Author's Note:**

> My first Kdrama fic, and hopefully not the last. Inspired by the [various](http://imageshack.us/f/703/photo22175.jpg/) [hairstyle](http://topicstock.pantip.com/chalermthai/topicstock/2010/01/A8787880/A8787880-53.jpg) [changes](http://images.tepaipascual.multiply.com/image/1/photos/upload/300x300/SQRmKgoKCG4AAGIniqc1/P10100471306.jpg?et=yJFY3TkU4hztLR3HsloQMA&nmid=0) that Sayong underwent throughout the course of "Jumong." I have to say, my ovaries appreciate the last choice, but it is hard to focus on any real plot when my brain starts chanting HNGH every time the camera pans over Sayong's face. Also, thanks to the wonders of multiple Korean romanizations, [their names are spelled with an S](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpellMyNameWithAnS) (link to TVTropes, you've been warned). Title is the Korean word that means—well, you'll see.

The Commander of the Koguryeo Royal Guards knew he was a brave man. It simply went without saying: he was famous as one of the General's loyal brother-subjects, the strongest of the three, and he had faced down more Han soldiers than there were members in the Tamul Army (past and present combined) without once batting an eye.

And yet it wasn't until two full moons had passed since the marriage and coronation of General Jumong and Chief Sosuhno that Hyoppo, brave Hyoppo, strongest-man-alive-in-Koguryeo-or-anywhere-else Hyoppo, got up enough courage to ask his boyfriend a question.

"Why did you decide to put up your hair?" he blurted out one evening the moment Sayong entered their shared chambers.

"Hello to you, too, Commander," Sayong returned with a gentle smile. He had a slight affectation of walking with one hand held delicately against his stomach; Oi had said it made the former Keru tactician look like he had a constant bellyache, but Hyoppo thought the gesture gave Sayong an air of even greater beauty and refinement. "A strange question. Whatever made you ask?"

"N-nothing," Hyoppo stammered, caught off-guard. "It's just—you used to wear it down and long, so I was only wondering why…"

"Indeed." Sayong sat down on the edge of the bed, and Hyoppo pulled a chair over from the worktable and sat down, waiting for an answer. "Long hair was fitting for me only when I was young and naïve," Sayong finally said. "When I grew out of my boyhood, I decided to become a man—as much as my condition will let me—and adopt a man's style to match. Why, does it not agree with you?"

"No! I mean, it's fine, you look good with anything—not that you need anything to look good, you would be fine without—wait, no, that's not what I meant..." Hyoppo felt himself blushing to the very roots of his own wild hair. Why did he always lose his composure in front of the ever-composed Sayong?

Sayong saw Hyoppo's discomfiture, but he only smiled wider. "What is it that you mean, then?"

"I, well, you see, what I mean is—" Hyoppo gathered the shredded remains of his courage before clasping his hands in front of him and, without looking up, muttering, "You don't always need to be a man when you're with me."

Sayong bowed his head; with his hair pulled up in a topknot like it currently was, the back of his long neck remained exposed, pale, and vulnerable. "And why not?" he asked softly.

"Because—" Hyoppo grasped for the right words. "Because when I'm here, I can be the man for you—for both of us."

Sayong's head remained lowered, but Hyoppo could see the corners of his mouth twitch upward. "I see." And with all the grace of a courtesan preparing herself for bed where her lover was waiting, Sayong reached up and unclasped the hairpiece that pinned his hair in place.

Hyoppo held his breath as Sayong's hair cascaded down, looking exactly as it had on the day a street ruffian named Hyoppo had first caught a glimpse of the Keru troop manager from afar. Even though many years had passed between then and now, Sayong had barely aged a day, retaining the radiance of his slightly-feminine features without a single blemish.

Hyoppo impulsively stretched his hand towards Sayong, wanting to feel the hair under his own fingers, but the other man inexplicably shrank back. "Wait," he said, and before Hyoppo could react Sayong had plunged his hand into the inner depths of his sleeve and drawn out his dagger—the short sword Hyoppo had begged off of Mo Palmo after Sayong had been wounded by Chief Songyang's assassins, the same sword that Sayong had carried with him now for almost six years.

With quick yet careful motions, as if he were clearing a path through a thick forest while still leaving the main trees unharmed, Sayong cut off the hair curtaining the right side of his face. The locks drifted onto the bedsheets in clumps of fine strands; Hyoppo didn't brush it off, and neither did Sayong, who continued to trim his hair until the right side just barely brushed his lower jaw.

After a moment of measuring the length with his own fingers, Sayong pulled the longer hair away from his neck, deftly tying a ribbon so that it draped over his left shoulder in a loose ponytail. "Well?" he said, laying down his sword beside him with the ghost of a smile still playing across his face. "What do you think?"

Hyoppo stared. The air in the room seemed to have thickened, making it hard for him to breathe easily, and congealed into a hot glowing mass in his lower regions. If Sayong had looked lovely with his hair down before, now he was downright seductive. The left side of his cleanshaven face was now exposed, while the right remained hidden by his longish bangs; and what beauty was revealed on his left could only be beaten by the promise of the enduring loveliness that was temptingly veiled on the right.

It was a long while before Hyoppo could properly form thoughts again; when his mind returned, he allowed his hand to slowly creep forward until he could just brush the silky raven's wing that covered his lover's forehead. " _Yeppuda,_ " he breathed, carefully choosing to use the predominantly-feminine adjective. "Beautiful."

Sayong said nothing, but instead pressed himself further into Hyoppo's touch until his lips met Hyoppo's palm in the lightest of feather kisses.

* *

When Sayong entered Jumong's meeting room the next morning to discuss some small detail of the palace finances, the General had to quickly hide his look of surprised confusion. "Your hair—it is different," he said finally. "Did the topknot not suit you, _Daesain?_ "

"Not at all, Your Highness." Sayong tilted his head so that only Hyoppo, already in the room as Jumong's personal guard, could see the full expression of his face. "I merely felt inclined for a change of style. Besides, I have been recently informed that I need not be a man at all times to be useful to my lord and master."

Jumong nodded to show his acceptance of Sayong's explanation and immediately moved on to the matter at hand, not noticing the deep red flush slowly spreading across Hyoppo's face, nor catching Sayong's slightest of smiles, and certainly never suspecting that Sayong's lord and master was anyone other than himself.


End file.
